RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – The flight recorder transcript from the executive jet involved in Brazil's worst air disaster reveals that its U.S. pilots were told by air traffic control to fly at the same altitude as a Boeing 737 before the planes collided over the Amazon rain forest, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Pilot Joseph Lepore was told by the tower in Sao Jose dos Campos to maintain an altitude of 37,000 feet as he flew the jet beyond Brasilia on a northwest path to Manaus, the Folha de Sao Paulo quoted the transcript as saying.
All 154 people aboard Gol Airlines Flight 1907 were killed when the Boeing 737 crashed into the Amazon jungle on Sept. 29 after clipping the Embraer jet. The smaller jet, with seven aboard, landed safely.
Associated Press
Mystery package
wasn't a bomb
OSLO, Norway – A police bomb squad raced across Norway by helicopter yesterday to investigate a mysterious, wired package that turned out to be a discarded Halloween prop left behind by a young man who had dressed up as a suicide bomber.
The package, with wires sticking out of it, was found at about 9 a.m. on a car parked outside the Alrek student dormitory in Bergen, police said.
Associated Press
Rescuers try to save
100 stranded horses
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Rescue workers struggled yesterday to save a herd of 100 horses stranded for days on a tiny knoll after a fierce storm turned their pasture into an angry sea in a wilderness area outside the dikes of Marrum, 90 miles northeast of Amsterdam.
Eighteen horses have drowned and the rest had spent two nights huddled together in knee-deep water. Rescuers planned to bring in horses that are strong swimmers to show the panicky animals, including several foals, how to get to dry land.
Associated Press
Voters recast ballots
destroyed in rioting
KINSHASA, Congo – Thousands returned to the polls in a northeast Congo town yesterday and recast ballots destroyed in rioting that followed the weekend presidential runoff, officials said.
The vote in Fataki, a small town in restive Ituri province, completed voting countrywide.
The repeat vote allowed about 22,000 people to cast ballots after theirs were burned by rioters Monday, one day after the runoff between President Joseph Kabila and rival Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba, local electoral official Aristotle Maki said.
Overall results are not expected for days or weeks.
Sunday's vote went off peacefully in Fataki. But early Monday, a soldier who apparently was drunk shot and killed two election workers there, sparking riots in which hundreds of people ransacked polling stations and burned thousands of uncollected ballots.
Associated Press
Rebels targeted
after killing 19
BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe vowed yesterday to defeat left-wing rebels and urged foreign governments to take a tough line with the guerrillas a day after they killed 17 police and two civilians.
Hundreds of fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, fired homemade mortars Wednesday in their deadliest assault this year on Uribe's U.S.-backed campaign to end Latin America's longest-running insurgency.
Authorities said the 19 were killed in the assault near Tierradentro, 235 miles from Bogota. The attack is part of a two-week guerrilla offensive that has shattered hopes of talks over hostages held by the rebels and eventual peace negotiations with Uribe.
Eleven rebels were also killed in the fighting.
Reuters
